Free Republic

ALBANY (CBS) ―It looks like the circus and childish antics are rearing their ugly head once again in Albany. It started as an angry blow-up, and then it escalated. A state senator with a history of anger management issues says his race-based rant was part of his fight against the "evil of white supremacy."

Donald Trump’s backers warn that Washington Beltway’s Plan A is to secure his removal or resignation. In case that fails, Plan B is to ensure he withdraws from the 2020 contest. New York: Many, if not most, genuine loyalists of the 45th President of the United States are in the world’s most famous metropolis. They are clustered within Manhattan, the location where the worldwide Trump Organisation is headquartered, and which has been home to four generations of what since 20 January 2017 is the First Family of the world’s most powerful country. While some of the few who are personally...

In the national explosion known as the midterm elections of 2018, ground zero had to be the Kansas 3rd District congressional race. There, a political novice who is Native American, openly gay and whom hardly anyone had ever heard of a year ago, swept away a historically popular, four-term Republican incumbent with 20 years of political experience, renowned for his campaigning skills and fundraising prowess. Sharice Davids was the most unlikely of candidates to beat Rep. Kevin Yoder. But that was before Yoder was body-snatched by President Donald J. Trump. To really grasp how that alliance had morphed two men...

Major League Baseball is requesting a return of a $5,000 donation to a Mississippi Republican candidate for U.S. Senate following her controversial comments and actions ahead of Tuesday's runoff election. Cindy Hyde-Smith has drawn scrutiny for saying at a Nov. 2 campaign event that she would attend a public hanging if invited. Further digging into Hyde-Smith's past has revealed a photo of her wearing a Confederate military-style hat in 2014 along with questions about the white private school she attended in the 1970s.

Time and Donald Trump do interesting things to a man. They make Al Gore glitter. It’s almost impossible not to be thinking of Gore now, with the words “Florida” and “recount” so prominent in the news, and it’s hard not to credit him with virtues absent in Trump and increasingly rare in politics these days. Grace in defeat, for one. For another: a commitment to democracy greater than a concern for self. Sure, the review of ballots that Gore’s campaign demanded in 2000, as he and George W. Bush waited to see who would get the Sunshine State’s electoral votes...

Toxic ideologies often start around family dinner tables. It's not just an uncle saying a racist joke, or a grandmother determining her xenophobic ideas as “a part of her time.” These comments seep into how we make decisions in voting booths, how judges rule in their chambers, how teachers guide students in school classrooms, how employment decisions are made, and how police react in high-stakes situations. After a year of relentless atrocities that don’t always make for easy conversation at the dinner table, it's important to make Thanksgiving preparations beyond the tablescape and the menu. This year, I want you...

Tuesday’s midterm House elections saw Democrats fare much better than they did in the 2016 presidential contest. Two years ago, Hillary Clinton topped Donald Trump by 4.6 percent in the popular vote, while this week, Democratic House candidates received 9 percent more votes than their Republican counterparts.

Democrat J.D. Ford pulled off a big upset Tuesday, unseating state Sen. Mike Delph, a Republican who has served the district since 2005. With two-thirds of precincts reporting, Ford held a 57 percent to 43 percent lead over Delph. “I wanted District 29 to be heard and with our win tonight, they will be,” Ford told fellow Democratic supporters Tuesday night. “Now you have a voice in the Indiana General Assembly.” Ford is thought to be Indiana’s first openly gay state lawmaker. “Ladies and gentleman, we just made history and no one can take that from us,” Ford said. It...

Democrat Katie Porter unseated incumbent Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.), marking the first time Democrats have won the inland Orange County district since its creation in 1983. The Associated Press called the race on Thursday, nine days after Election Day. Walters, a former Laguna Niguel mayor and state lawmaker, had aligned herself with the unpopular President Trump this past election cycle. She was one of a handful of vulnerable Republicans who voted for and defended both Trump’s Obamacare repeal bill and his tax cuts law.

Rep. Karen Handel (R-Ga.) conceded Thursday in her tight House race in an Atlanta suburb to gun control activist Lucy McBath (D). The victory puts the Georgia district in Democratic hands more than a year after the party fell short last year in a heated special election that drew national attention. Handel ended up winning by about five points over Jon Ossoff.

In a Northern Virginia swing district that is one of the most watched in this midterm election, one-quarter of the electorate can’t really say what they think of state Sen. Jennifer Wexton. But in most polls, the Democrat is comfortably ahead of Rep. Barbara Comstock, the two-term Republican who is ubiquitous. That phenomenon says plenty about this particular moment in this particular suburban district across the river from Washington, heavy with college-educated, affluent voters and growing immigrant communities. Voters in Virginia’s 10th Congressional District say they want to vote for a Democrat — any Democrat — as a check on...

Democratic U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez led Republican rival Bob Hugin by 15 percentage points among likely voters in a poll released a day before New Jersey voters go to the polls. Menendez was ahead of Hugin, a former Celgene Corp. executive, 55 percent to 40 percent in a Quinnipiac University poll released Monday. It was the second straight survey to give him a double-digit lead after several polls showed a tight race. A Stockton University poll released Friday had Menendez ahead, 51 percent to 39 percent. Menendez never trailed in any survey.

The controversy over a campaign staffer to Republican state Sen. Martin Golden inviting an alt-right leader to speak at a GOP club continued to escalate as a Bay Ridge social justice organization demonstrated in front of the lawmaker’s campaign headquarters and supporters staunchly defended him. The group Bay Ridge for Social Justice held a protest rally outside Golden’s campaign office at 7615 Third Ave. on Oct. 21 to demand that the senator fire Ian Reilly.

MAPLEWOOD, NJ - The Essex County Freeholders called for the ouster of the New Jersey Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson but have not budged on ending its controversial contract with the agency. At its Wednesday meeting in Maplewood, the freeholders board passed a resolution supporting other lawmakers who have called for Emilio Karim Dabul to be terminated from his position as ICE spokesperson. Dabul has publicly defended people who the Southern Poverty Law Center have labeled anti-Muslim. Dabul referred questions to ICE headquarters in Washington D.C. A spokesperson from headquarters responded with a brief statement, which included a link...

Panthers safety Eric Reid’s visible beef with Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins in today’s game was indeed for the expected reasons. After Philly collapsed and Carolina took the 21-17 victory, Reid was at first hesitant to explain why he exchanged words with Jenkins during the pregame coin toss, but then he kind of explained it anyway.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Marc Molinaro said Monday that he wouldn’t have invited the founder of a far-right organization to address the Metropolitan Republican Club on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The appearance of Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes’ club on Friday was followed by violent beat-downs of protesters outside that appeared to involve dozens of members of the group.

(CNN)A coalition of advocacy groups has launched a lawsuit to block Georgia from enforcing a practice critics say endangers the votes of more than 50,000 people in November and potentially larger numbers headed into the 2020 presidential election cycle. The Campaign Legal Center and Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law argued in the suit, which was filed in a federal district court on Thursday, that the state's "exact match" requirement violates the Voting Rights Act, the National Voter Registration Act and the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The office of Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is now running for...

f Democrat Andrew Gillum defeats Republican Ron DeSantis, Floridians will make history by electing the state’s first black governor. It’s an exciting prospect for many voters. “There’s certainly a buzz with our brother, Andrew Gillum, running for governor,” said Anthony Rankine-Palmer, president of the Florida Atlantic University chapter of the nonprofit community service and civic engagement group Progressive Black Men. “People see a familiar face. They see someone who looks like them.” But one thing that wouldn’t change, most Florida voters believe, is race relations. Three out of four Florida voters in the Quinnipiac University Poll released this week said...

On a balmy night in Austin, against the backdrop of the glittering high-rises of the city’s booming downtown, Beto O’Rourke is laying out his audacious plan to change the face of Texas, and America. In front of him, packed into an open-air park, a largely young crowd of 40,000 is thrumming with scarcely contained glee. Even in the liberal bubble of Austin they have never experienced anything like this: a Democrat seriously in the running for a Senate seat, vying to topple Ted Cruz, the Tea Party fanatic whom even fellow Republicans call “Lucifer in the flesh”. “We are not...

Michigan Freepers.....I have been looking at some of the polling lately in Michigan, it shows suburban Rep. Mike Bishop, MI GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Schuette and MI GOP Senate candidate John James losing to their Democratic rivals. Michigan a battleground state has a lot of Independents. A lot of them voted for Trump-Pence. Are they the apathetic, apolitical types that were inspired by Trump's message but are apathetic or indifferent to regular, traditional politics as usual. Is Trump's coattails able to help the MI GOP, or is it suburban white women lashing out on the MI GOP and other Midwestern...